Probably the biggest news of the century!! Probably not for everyone, but definitely for me. Let’s get to the point. Bioware and Lucasarts has finally revealed the release date of the long awaited Star Wars The Old Republic – SWTOR.

This huge SWTOR mmo will be released on December 20. Bioware and Lucasarts announced this morning that the SWTOR release will be making its official debut in North America on December 20, with a European launch 2 days later, 22nd of December.

“This is an incredible moment for everyone at Bioware and our partners at Lucasarts who have dedicated their lives to build this extraordinary game. We appreciate the patience from the millions of fans who have been waiting for the game’s release,” said Bioware co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka during the keynote at the 2011 Eurogamer Expo.

Based on traditional MMOs, SWTOR will start with 30 days of free play time and several subscription models are announced as well.

1 month: $14.99/month
3 months: $13.99/month
6 months: $12.99/month

Pre-orders of the game are still in 3 different editions – Collector’s, Digital Deluxe, and Standard –come with special early access to the MMO.

If you’re looking for more than preliminary info, this SWTOR Guide is recommended. The manual is also available as part of a SWTOR Complete Guides Bundle; further recommended for serious SWTOR gamers.

Fans of SWTOR now have a slight glimpse of joy as Frank Gibeau as now they know that the release of this huge MMO will be tied closely with the Beta. With 2 million people signed up for the beta and even though pre-order sales have shot through EA’s pre-order records, there is still a lot that can go wrong in an MMO launch. If you recall previous MMOs in the past like WOW and other MMOs, their launch caused a massive server problem trying to uphold the millions of players.

“We’re driving towards a date, but… [we] …want to make sure that these services can last a decade… It is definitely tied to the beta test feedback that’s ongoing and so far, so good. We feel good about the date that we’re heading towards but you’re right, you could have a Crazy Ivan show up in the September/October beta test and be like, ‘wow, I’ve got to fix that’.”

“The other thing is, the technology of standing these things up and then getting all the server farms to work together, talk to one another, store character records… it’s extraordinarily complex and so we want a very stable experience.”

“We don’t want to happen to us what happened to WoW and a couple of other services where in the first week there were queues trying to get on to the servers, the entire service crashed — we don’t want that to happen. So we need to nail and make sure that it’s up 24/7 and [that] it’s high quality.”

In summary, the rumors heard a few months ago through EA’s marketing distribution has led us to believe that we are in the plans for something very big and that Bioware is not in a hurry to get there. All in all, game release will depend mainly on Beta testers on their feedback, so if you are one of them, feel free to share your stories here so we can get an indication if the game might be on time or pushed back.

For all Star Wars: the Old Republic fans, the director of The Old Republic has said that “it would be terrible if something went wrong just as the game was getting going.”

Bioware after so much work and expectation from gamers want a smooth, bug-free, problem free game. That is the main reason that the studio hasn’t announced a release date yet. Game director James Ohlen says that BioWare is keeping the SWTOR release date on a down low in order to give the game itself time to make sure it lives up to all the hype and expectation for this Star Wars MMO.

He also said it would be a shame if some devastating catastrophe with the game server’s went down after breaking EA pre-order records. Some developers who have been working on the game since 2006 would be pretty disappointed too if something went wrong.

Ready your lightsabers for the most amazing and still highly anticipated game of the year, Star Wars the Old Republic. Electronic Arts and Bioware are still silent as the the SWTOR release date but details to the game are slowly being revealed, quenching the game-hungry gamers thirst for this grand mmorpg.

SWTOR Beta participants has shot over the roof, the sheer numbers of applicants have blown this game away and numerous amounts of gamers finally have had hands on experience of the game at E3.

Frank Gibeau, EA Games head had a chat with Industrygamers recently to discuss events regarding their developments costs of the game SWTOR and the content that gamers will be enjoying soon enough. While the figures for development costs were not revealed by Gibeau, estimates of the costs have been massive. Gibeau states clearly that this investment in time and especially money has been worth it as the game contains over 200 hours of gameplay for each class. This 200 hours is only for one of the each six available classes and not including the crafting, raids and multiplayer. Be prepared to be immersed in this gigantic game.

Gibeau also confidently expects that Star Wars the Old Republic will do what no other mmorpg has done, and that is to ‘transport fans to another galaxy’, providing the best experience possible even though the game had been so expensive to produce.

With Origin being the online service EA has selected to deliver SWTOR and help on the launch of a new digital storefront, Gibeau tipped gamers off that there will be in the future special and exclusive content. Gibeau hopes that Origin has the potential of covering a wider and new range of audience which will help return some of the huge investments they have made in the game – mainly investments in the expansive class-system and amazing cinematics. Over thousands of hours worth of playtime, it seems like SWTOR will have what it takes to be the mmo of the next century.

SWTOR Release date: expected to released sometime next year only on the PC

Looking for more advanced content? Check out this SWTOR Guide which comes highly recommended.

Rumors of SWTOR being released in September are being tossed around everywhere, getting everyones immediate attention. Whether it is true or false, the hype has never been greater. EA has been reluctant to give the public a release date just yet with many claims but ShopTo has no fear, even going so far as to list in their website that the game will be released this September 9th. The listing has since mysteriously changed back to TBC.

SWTOR beta has been ope for quite some time already and you can sign up at their official SWTOR website.